Job Description
Job Description
Senior Manager, Software Engineering
FinTech · Canada (Hybrid) · Full-Time
1 Day in Office $175,000 – $190,000 CAD base · 15% annual bonus · Stock Options $10,000
Placed by Sage Recruiting on behalf of a confidential client.
Our FinTech client is hiring a Senior Manager, Software Engineering to lead two payments pods - Core Payments and Premium Finance - within our Financial Management growth segment. This is a 50/50 player-coach role: you'll stay technically engaged while owning hiring, coaching, roadmapping, performance management, and stakeholder work. You'll increase delivery velocity by setting clear direction, cutting decision latency, and building systems that scale. You co-own outcomes with Product and Architecture and drive measurable gains across cycle time, defect escape, MTTR, and predictability - with AI and automation as core levers, not optional additions.
What You'll Do
- Lead two pods directly: Core Payments (one sub-manager, four reports) and Premium Finance (six ICs). Hire, coach, and set clear performance expectations across both.
- Set technical direction and make timely prioritization and architecture decisions that reduce tech debt and preserve long-term velocity; design for reuse and scale.
- Stay hands-on: debug customer issues, ship small fixes, and improve operational readiness. Engineering leaders here keep their skills current.
- Own delivery metrics end-to-end - cycle time, defect escape, MTTR, predictability - and proactively flag blockers and delays before they become visible problems.
- Run cross-functional conversations with DevOps, cloud engineering, product, and business stakeholders independently. Filter organizational noise; don't hand it off.
- Give feedback on product and technical specs; coach ICs and managers through tradeoffs to reach the right decisions.
- Raise the bar on quality: shift-left testing, enforce Definition of Done, build observability (dashboards, alerts, runbooks), and lead incident response and RCAs to prevent recurrence.
- Embed Claude Code, custom AI harnesses, and automation into daily execution - genuine agentic use, not autocomplete.
What You'll Need
- 8+ years designing and building enterprise software; experience in large organizations required
- 3+ years leading engineering teams; managing multiple teams preferred
- Core stack: Node.js, React, TypeScript/JavaScript, PostgreSQL
- Architecture fluency: microservices, monolith components, async domain-driven design, micro frontends
- Cloud and infrastructure: GCP, Kubernetes, Apigee, IAC
- Observability and async: Datadog, Temporal, Redis
- CI/CD fluency: GitHub Actions, standard deploy and release practices
- Track record owning delivery metrics: cycle time, defect escape, MTTR, and predictability
- Demonstrated ability to recruit, coach, and develop engineers - not just manage output
- Hands-on experience with AI tooling, custom harnesses, or agents; awareness alone is not enough
- Strong cross-functional instincts: comfortable navigating large-org complexity without a guide
- Experience building Payments or Financial products preferred; adjacent regulated verticals (insurance, healthtech) transfer well
- Bachelor's in computer science, MIS, or equivalent